iFixit: Samsung’s Gear 2 is easy to take apart, has replaceable battery

The new smartwatch is surprisingly user-serviceable for something of its size.

We weren't the biggest fans of Samsung's first Galaxy Gear, but however you feel about it (and the wearable computing phenomenon in general), it's clear that Samsung is willing to iterate quickly to fix the watch's biggest problems. That's the thinking behind the Tizen-powered Gear 2 smartwatches the company announced at Mobile World Congress in February—they trailed the original Gear by just a few months, but they aim to fix some of the watch's biggest problems.

Further Reading

The way the watches work will ultimately be more important than what's inside them, but iFixit's thorough teardown gives us some insight into what makes them tick. As advertised, the camera has been moved from the band of the watch to the body, and this makes the band easy to replace without the need for any screwdrivers or other tools.

Surprisingly, the rest of the watch isn't that easy to take apart, either. Four small Torx screws hold the back of the watch to the rest of it, and once you're inside you'll be able to remove the 300 mAh battery easily—it even has a pull tab. While this is probably the only internal component you'd actually need to replace over the useful life of a watch like this, iFixit was able to remove the camera, main system board, speaker, and the rest of the internal components with tweezers and spudgers—there isn't a lot of glue or specialty screws holding this thing together, which is odd for a product as small and tightly integrated as this one.

In the end, iFixit gave the watch an eight out of 10 on its repairability scale, docking points primarily because the LCD panel and the watch's front glass are fused together. Fusing these layers has tangible benefits—it makes the device thinner, and eliminating the traditional air gap between glass and display can help with color, contrast, and clarity—but the tradeoff is that you'll need to replace both layers if you break one of them. Look for a more detailed review of Samsung's latest Gears in the coming days.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.